Tag Archive for: multi-factor authentication

I really hate hearing from customers and prospective customers that we were right and that they wish they had taken our advice to harden their systems and implement tighter security controls before their breach. Feedback from customers suggests the inconvenience of implementing additional controls is often what keeps them from taking action as opposed to the cost, which is negligible for some of the most effective controls like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). If you think the controls are inconvenient, you should spend some time visiting with someone who has been through a breach.

The most likely cyber-attack a small business will experience is an email breach which quickly lead to real payment fraud losses, reputational damage, and compliance risk. Once a criminal organization (yes, there are organizations attacking your small business) has success breaching one email account, you can expect the attacks to increase in volume and sophistication. Businesses can dramatically reduce email breach risk with relatively little cost and yes, some minor inconvenience.

Take the Next Steps

If you own a business or have are responsible for managing business risk, you need to take steps to protect your business, your shareholders, your employees, your vendors, and most importantly your customers. You must take action to implement additional controls. Start by asking your IT professionals to implement controls for yourself so you can understand first-hand how the controls protect your business and the level of inconvenience the controls may cause. This puts you in the best position possible to make informed decisions about how to protect your business and champion initiatives to tighten controls.

If you’ve done nothing to date, start with implementing MFA for your business email and then work with an IT professional to constantly review and improve security controls around all your systems and data.

I’m right and I hope I never have to tell you “I told you so”.

Your credentials can be phished, period.  If you think you’re above being phished, you’re wrong.  We all have weak moments and the criminals are really good at praying on our whims and emotions.  Trust me, you can be phished.  Don’t put so much pressure on yourself.  Implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever possible to protect your accounts even if you are phished.  This is so important that we put together a video to show you how.  Watch this video.  Please just give us a call if you want help or want to discuss additional configuration options to ease implementation for your business.  We will be happy to help.

If you don’t know anything about Office 365 Multi-Factor Authentication please check out our blog and video from December 2017 for a complete overview https://www.gowestit.com/office-365-multi-factor-authentication.

 

 

Your business is vulnerable to cybercriminals, period. So, workforce security should be top of mind for you and your business.

Workforce security matters

The truth is that no business is fully “secure”. Rather, businesses assume various amounts of acceptable risk. Your responsibility is to figure out where your organization lies on the workforce security spectrum, how much cyber risk you are willing to comfortably assume, and continually act to reduce your risk to those levels.

We understand that most businesses, especially SMB’s, can’t and won’t do everything their IT provider may recommend. This is true for a myriad of reasons including operational efficiency, timing, focus on your core business, and of course budget considerations. We also believe that most businesses do not realize the amount of risk which they currently assume. If you did, you would likely already be doing more!

To this end, Go West IT has developed our “Top Ten Task to Mitigate Cyber Risk”

Review your workforce security posture with your current IT provider and discuss how to implement the next best thing you can do to reduce your risk (HINT: If you’ve done nothing to date, start with backups, patching, and multi-factor authentication). If you need help please give us a shout, our experts will help you recognize, plan, and take the steps to mitigate your risk.

Understand where you are today… know where you want to be tomorrow… build the roadmap to get you there. You can reduce your risk, get started today! Give us a call, email us, or contact our support. You can get secured today! You can check out more about our Go Managed Security Plans here. If you have any questions, please reach out to us.

David Lewien
President, Go West IT

Download the PDF: Top Ten Tasks to Mitigate Cyber Risk
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